When two ministers went missing

As former President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure muddled toward its desultory end, two of his senior ministers, with responsibility for some of the most critical issues of state, went missing from their strategic turfs.

I called attention to one of them, the Foreign Minister, Ambassador Aminu Wali, in my September 23, 2014, column titled “Where is our Foreign Minister?”

“Has anyone in the attentive audience ever seen, heard, sensed or otherwise encountered Ambassador Aminu Wali acting out his remit since he was appointed Foreign Minister in March 2014?’’ I asked.

I had raised this question in the wake of the Chibok abductions, when the accident-prone Jonathan administration stumbled from miscue to egregious miscue in a perfect calendar of blunders. Day after day, Nigeria took a pummelling in the global news media. And the foreign minister, who should have been the international face of Nigeria at such a time, was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, he was trying desperately to sell Dr Jonathan to political kingmakers in the so-called Northwest geopolitical zone as the best thing to have happened to Nigeria since the amalgamation, and an unquestionably worthy candidate for re-election.

Hear him as he read the communiqué at the end of the meeting: “Having carefully considered the steady and stable progress of our nation under the able leadership of the President, the stakeholders of PDP in the Northwest, having in mind the monumental strides attained by this administration, have resolved to urge President Jonathan to declare for president in the forthcoming 2015 elections so as to continue the good works he started in nation building.”

They say an ambassador is a person sent to lie for his country abroad. Ambassador Wali was going round the country lying for the president and his administration.

To be fair to Wali, he was not the only minister plying that trade. The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, did exactly that each time he opened his mouth. So did the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, but with emphasis on his personal achievement.

It came as no surprise, then, that Wali’s expertise was not tapped during what must rank as one of Jonathan administration’s most humiliating foreign misadventures, namely, the dramatic seizure in hard currency of the equivalent of N9.3 million from a Nigerian-owned private jet that made a covert landing at a private airport near Johannesburg, in South Africa, with the Jonathan administration’s fingerprints all over it.

The administration said the money was for the purchase of arms from private vendors for the security services and that the shipment was properly documented. The South African authorities, on the other hand, were acting on the theory that this was a money-laundering caper gone awry and were not in the least impressed by the disingenuous fudging that marked Abuja’s attempt to explain the incident away.

The last is yet to be heard of that incident

The second cabinet official who went missing from his strategic turf at critical points in the last phase of Dr Jonathan’s presidency was Lt.-Gen. Aliyu Gusau, the Minister of Defence and, before that, National Security Adviser in the Obasanjo administration.

Aliyu Gusau had been appointed to replace Dr Bello Haliru, to demonstrate the government’s resolve to regain vast swathes of territory Boko Haram had seized in the Northeast, and to crush the insurgency.

Shortly after resuming office, he summoned the service chiefs to his office for a meeting, at which the war effort was likely to figure prominently. The Chief of Defence Staff, Air Vice Marshal Alex Badeh, countermanded the summons, stating that the invitation had to be routed through his office.

Whereupon, as was widely reported in the media, Aliyu Gusau resigned. Later reports said the minister had insisted on meeting with service chiefs alone, and had demanded an apology from Badeh, who was probably still in high school — or in the military academy – when Aliyu Gusau was promoted to the rank of army general.

Despite President Jonathan’s intervention, the twain stood their grounds, and Aliyu Gusau made it known that, contrary to media reports, he had not resigned.

For all practical purposes, however, he might as well have resigned.

Boko Haram escalated its campaign of murder and mayhem and battled the ill-equipped and ill-used Nigerian military to a stalemate, often dictating the terms of engagement. In one instance, an entire army battalion, faced with Boko Haram’s superior firepower and motivation, “tactically manoeuvred” its way to neighbouring Cameroun, where it was disarmed and escorted back to base.

Through it all, the minister of Defence was missing. He was not seen at the war front rallying the troops and boosting their morale. Usually self-effacing, and a man of few words as befits the super spook – beg your pardon – the consummate intelligence officer that he is, this time he stood aloof, distant, as if the war was none of his business.

Nor did he join in the controversy surrounding the seizure by South Africa of a cash-laden private jet from Nigeria that had landed surreptitiously in a private airport near Johannesburg, allegedly on a mission to buy arms from private dealers for the Nigerian “security services.”

Was Badeh’s refusal to submit to the authority of the minister of Defence the reason General Aliyu Gusau chose to keep his own counsel in matters relating to the military, including the Boko Haram insurgency that was steadily incorporating more and more Nigerian territory under its infernal control?

Was that how it also came about that the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), who, it has been said, was not a career intelligence officer but had on his own taken a crash course in military intelligence after his retirement — was that how he came to supplant the minister of Defence and to assume responsibility for procuring arms and ammunition and other materials for the military directly or through contractors?

The figures cited in those transactions, in which Dasuki seems to be a central figure, boggle the mind. So do the puny returns resulting therefrom, according to officials looking into the matter. President Jonathan, Dasuki has said, approved all the transactions at issue.

Aliyu Gusau’s name has not figured thus far in the investigations. He must be glad that he kept his distance from all the wheeling and dealing that the EFCC says it has uncovered in the office of the National Security Adviser.

Should he merely have kept his distance under the circumstances? Should he not have resigned to protect his honour?

For the record will show that, under his watch as Defence minister, the armed forces could not tame Boko Haram, and allegations of shady transactions in military purchases surfaced.

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